Broken Mage
by kimicatdemon
Summary: Brighton realizes that maybe the hardest thing about being a teacher is dealing with students on a bad day.


The dust had settled. The loud noise from moments ago was gone, replaced with chatter from the distance. But it didn't matter. He didn't hear it. His eyes were fixed on the affected area, trying to process what just happened.

Moments ago, she was standing in front of him. She had told him how much he meant to her… how much the crew themselves meant to her. She gave the happiest smile he had ever seen as she ran into the Black Wing's headquarters. And then…

Everything just stood still for him. He couldn't find words to describe what happened. He couldn't find a way to bring himself to believe what had just happened. His mind was searching for a reason to shrug it off. To say it didn't really happen, and this was all some kind of joke. On the other hand, his mind was also telling him that he had a job to do. Claudine had sent him there to find Vita and hopefully rescue her, but with her being gone, he had to report the end result back…

It hurt. The pain had sunk in so quickly that Ruka did not even realize how numb he was. He just stood there, still unaware of the voices as they approached.

Fortunately, the explosion was not unnoticed by friendly forces too. Brighton teleported in quickly to see what had occurred, only to see Ruka standing there like an empty shell. "Hey kid!" Brighton yelled out quietly, "Come on! We gotta get moving!"

Nothing. Not a single flinch. Brighton ran up to Ruka and shook him a bit, "Hey! Are you listenin-?" Brighton caught a glimpse of Ruka's face. It was an expression that he couldn't describe. It was something like shock, but far worse. Something that startled him to the point of leaving him empty. He clearly wasn't going to respond at all, but Brighton couldn't leave his student idly sitting around, waiting to be captured.

"You're not making my job an easy one, kid." Brighton said and he used his teleportation magic to flee the area.

Brighton managed to teleport around Ruka's own residency. He took a breath and looked around. He had never been inside of Ruka's house before, so he couldn't teleport inside, but he did know what the outside looked like. He confirmed the coast was clear and nodded, "Alright, looks like it should stay quiet for a while…" he looked at his student, whose face remained unchanged, like he hadn't even noticed he had been moved.

Brighton sighed a bit and shook his head, "Come on. I hope your door is unlocked." Which he knew it probably was. It was considered illegal to keep ones house locked at any point in time, unless you lived in a shop. He grabbed Ruka's arm and ran across the area quickly and flew into Ruka's house, trying to be fast yet quiet.

It seemed to be successful. No one noticed and the area looked as dead as before. "Hmmm…" Brighton took a bit of pride in that. He looked over at Ruka to see if he noticed he was home or that Brighton just tugged at him to get him home. Nothing. Not a thing had changed. He just stared endlessly forward, like he wasn't even looking at what was really in front of his face, just something he pictured there.

Taking a deep sigh, Brighton looked around. "Hmm… You got a nice place." He remarked out loud, "Where the hell do you lie down?" he walked around and found some kind of room. He assumed it to be Ruka's room, considering he lived alone. He walked back calmly and gave a gentle push to Ruka. "Come on kid, you need to lie down."

Brighton basically had to treat Ruka like a doll of some sort. He just didn't want to move. He didn't want to say anything, hell, Brighton was pretty sure he wasn't even blinking! He was in some kind of trance state and showed no sign of snapping out of it. "Maybe after you rest." He said as he laid his hand over Ruka's eyes and closed them shut.

Brighton looked at Ruka. He almost seemed peaceful looking, despite the state of shock he was in. Brighton hoped he was right and believed Ruka would calm down after some rest. He looked around the room and noticed how neat and tidy everything was. "Heh… damn kid, you keep your house cleaner than mine, and I clean for living."

Brighton walked around and just checked out Ruka's house over all. Everything was carefully tended to and kept tidy. Nothing was clustered, but he did notice Ruka needed to do some laundry. All in all, he was surprised. "And this is friends with Aiden? How bout that…" Brighton said out of wonder.

He looked outside and noticed the coast was still clear. "Must be on red alert from that explosion… What the hell was with that anyway?" Brighton looked down the halls that lead to Ruka's room. Something had happened, and he did not like it. Not one bit. But for now, he had to wait. He couldn't get a straight answer, and he didn't like to jump to conclusions over things. He let others do that. He let out a sigh and quickly teleported out of Ruka's house, hoping he would be okay.

The day fell quickly it seemed. The sun had set and was replaced by a dark night time sky. The town had its usual patrol members looking for curfew breakers, keeping quiet to hear their footsteps.

Inside of Ruka's house though, Ruka's eyes slammed open. He sat up quickly and looked around. "This is…" He turned over to his left and then over to his right. He looked at the bed he was in and was able to confirm he was home. "How did I…?" He asked himself.

He tried to slide out of bed and noticed he was still in his uniform. "Ah? This… I should change out of this…" He remarked in a rather startled manner. As he changed into some more casual wear, he looked at his uniform. Something didn't feel right. "Why was I in uniform? How did I get home?" He thought to himself. He felt awful. Sick even. He couldn't explain it, but he felt like he had forgotten something.

He continued to stare at his battle suit a bit longer, he grew even sicker by looking at it, but he really needed an answer for what exactly happened. He continued to think a bit longer when… it slammed on him like a bag of bricks.

He felt his whole body go numb again. He recalled that moment, where Vita smiled at him and told him how happy she was, and the moment after when she was gone. The pain wouldn't stop beating on him. He started to take deep breaths in an attempt to stay calm. "J-just… stay calm… okay? It… It just happened… there was nothing you could…" His voice shook as he tried to talk to himself. He returned to taking deep breaths. He tried to find something else to think of, something to take his mind off of things. "What… what about everyone else?" He thought to himself, "Do they know? …I …I should probably go and tell them, they liked her too and…" he stiffened up. While talking his mind ran through every memory he had of her possible. This included her crying in a cage that she was wrongly put in by the said group.

He suddenly felt horrid rage. It wasn't good at all. He felt sad yet angered, he felt guilty yet judgmental. He was just so confused… what was he supposed to do? Vita… she was his reason for joining the resistance, and she was gone. Not just taken gone, but actually gone. Dead. She wasn't coming back. Ruka decided the best course of action would be to just find a way to calm down. He was getting pretty worked up over all, and at this hour, that probably wasn't the best.

He made his wake into his kitchen and tried to make himself a drink of water. He looked at it and stared at its surface. He wasn't thirsty, why was he going to drink this anyway? He just threw the cup against the wall and watched it make a small chip in the wall. Realizing his own action, he darted up and saw a small crack in the cup from the impact. "Ah…" he went down to pick it up, but his mind kept wandering. He couldn't think clearly at all. He walked over to this sink and tossed the cup in. He decided to just sit in the living room for now, just to let this thinking phase pass over.

Those last moments… those last moments kept replaying and replaying over in his head. On top of that, he kept recalling all the hard times she had to go through… all because she was an experiment. Those Black Wings ruined her life. He had tried. He had really tried. He wanted Vita to live a normal life one day. He wanted her to go outside and meet the rest of the kids one day, maybe even interact with them and befriend them. He wanted her to be normal. But now….

He started to pace around the floor. Sitting down wasn't helping. Nothing was! Was walking around even going to do him any good? Was thinking going to do him any good? Every emotion inside of him swirled together and broke. He laid his hand on the nearest shelf and held on to it with a tight clutch. "I don't get it…" he started up. He threw the small shelf and everything on it on the ground. "I don't get it at all!" he took a deep breath or two, looking at the shelf. A part of him told him to calm down and fix the shelf, but he was beyond that point of caring. He stormed off and slammed anything in his path on to the ground.

"What's the point in this?" He looked at his suit and threw it against the wall. "You can't look after the people you want to protect? Is that it?" he yelled at it, almost as if he were yelling at himself. "You're pathetic!" he yelled out loud. "Useless even!" He laid back against the wall and looked at the suit again.

A sad chuckle escaped him. "Look at this…" he said sadly, "I'm yelling at my own damn clothes like it's their fault."

The quick burst of anger had left for the moment, leaving Ruka feeling broken. "What is the point? I just… I just can't…" he looked around his room and noticed how much he had wrecked. The shelves lay on the ground; some of them even looked broken. Pictures on the walls were shattered. It was just a mess… it was rather fitting.

"I don't…even need to be here…" Ruka convinced himself. After all, the resistance needed people that could accomplish things that could help others. He had done none of these things. All he did was drag Vita from one prison to another, and he couldn't even keep her safe.

No…no… that wasn't right. He did everything he could for her. He tried to make her happy. He tried to help her. He wanted her to live a normal life after being freed, but everyone there… They just kept her there, they watched her every action like she was a criminal, and when the slightest doubt showed up, they threw her in a cage. That wasn't his fault! That was them! He tried to help someone, and they made it to where he couldn't do anything.

"Who the hell needs them?" He said, letting his anger get the better of him again. He slammed his closet open and pulled out a few clothes. "I don't care about this town! Why the hell should I? The people trying to help are just as corrupt as the ones who took over!" he pulled out some of his clothes and looked at the carefully. There were memories instilled into most of them. Mostly about the happy kids around town. The kids that she would never get to meet. The kids that would have loved to be her friend.

The kids that the whole town was looking after…

Ruka threw the clothes to the ground and fell to the floor, feeling slight traces of tears roll down his cheeks. "This… This isn't fair… They… didn't mean it… right? They just… they just didn't know… there wasn't…" Ruka threw his hands over his face, trying to collect himself. He couldn't decide. Who was the friend here? Who was the foe? Who did he have to turn to? He took deep breaths again trying to prevent himself from crying.

Brighton teleported close to where he teleported from. "Hey kid, what the hell's going on in here? I heard some patrol guards talkin about noise over here and—" Brighton's eyes widened. The house was a wreck.

"Well then… I know I clean for a living, but even I think this is a bit drastic." Brighton remarked. The first thing on his mind was to find Ruka. Clearly he was a bit…riled up at the moment.

Brighton walked over to his room and saw Ruka slamming clothes into a bag violently. "Eh? Hey, kid, what are you doing?" He yelled out.

Ruka didn't answer. He kept throwing clothes in and slammed his fist in the bag to make more room.

"Hey, kid!" Brighton ran up and laid a hand on his shoulder to get his attention.

"Get your FUCKING hand off of me!" Ruka yelled loudly.

Brighton flinched a bit. Had that have been Aiden, he would have been expecting it and would have not removed his hand at all, but with Ruka? He had never dreamed it would have been possible to say something like that. "Ruka…" he said sternly, lowering himself closer to the floor "Calm down. Tell me, what's wrong?"

Ruka didn't even bother to look up or stop what he was doing. "What's WRONG you ask? WRONG?" He said in a clearly stressed voice "Everything's wrong! This whole town is wrong!"

Brighton tried to think of what could have happened that would have made him say something like that. "Well, yeah, I'll admit, it has its flaws at the moment, but all in all it's not a bad plac—"

"Not a bad place? Are you kidding me?" Ruka looked at Brighton dead in the eyes, "Look at how this town's degraded! No one trust anyone! No one cares to look out for anyone once they can do anything!"

"Huh?" Brighton raised a brow at Ruka's logic. "Ruka, that makes no sense. Of we trust others, how do you think the resistance was for—"

"Then why didn't you trust her? Why didn't you trust me?" Ruka yelled back and rose to his feet. "She… she had to spend her last days feeling like a miserable prisoner all over again because you guys can't give any bit of trust out to anyone!"

Brighton closed his eyes and sighed. What Ruka said was a bit over the line, but he would over look that for now. Something else he said caught his ears first. "Last days eh?" Brighton rose up to his feet. "So I am taking it she ended up dead in that explosion…"

"She wasn't IN the explosion," Ruka looked towards the ground, "She…. She… she WAS the explosion!"

Brighton jumped a bit, "She… was?"

Ruka sat on his bed and held his hands to his forehead, "There was bomb inside of her… It… it had been there the whole time." His voice got unstable again, "they set it off and she … she wanted to do everyone one last favor…" He looked up at Brighton and rose to his feet, "Even though no one deserves it at all!"

Brighton took note of Ruka's sudden mood swing and waved his hands a bit, "Alright, I think I get the picture, but right now, you need to settle down and calm yourself before you start getting a bit out of hand…"

"A bit out of hand? Ha!" Ruka kicked the packed bag across the room, "Of course it's always like that with you guys too. Have to keep EVERYONE under control. You guys aren't any different from the Black Wings, you just CLAIM to be!"

Brighton's face grew angry at that remark, "Ruka, you take back this instant, or I will get pissed off."

"Or what?" Ruka remarked, "You gonna throw me in a cage too?"

"I will not do that, I will not hesitate to beat some sense into you, child." Brighton growled out.

"Oh of course, violence, let's just take my point and prove it further shall we?" Ruka yelled out.

Brighton wasn't sure how hard he hit Ruka, bit he did sent the boy flying on the floor with a good punch to the face. "Kid, you are REALLY starting to cross the line here."

Ruka got up and looked Brighton in the eyes with an angry glare, "Cross the line? Where does this line stand? You guys can do whatever you want to people so long as you have any kind of justification, no matter how doubtful or small. And guess what? You take talk like to be justification for punishment!" He waved his arms out in a confused manner, "What am I supposed to do? Just STAND here and be OKAY with this!"

Brighton took a deep breath. He was a bit shocked honestly. Ruka had always seemed so kind and caring that he almost couldn't picture him ever getting mad. He was starting to regret that he ever wanted to picture it. "Look, kid, I understand, you're having a bit of a hard time, but listen we did what we had to—"

"Gee, that's a convenient line, don't those Black Wings say the EXACT SAME THING?" Ruka interrupted.

Brighton slammed Ruka up against the wall and looked him dead in the eyes, "Listen here Ruka, I am NOT going to repeat myself. Do you think we WANTED to do that? Do you honestly think we all sat there and were PROUD of this! We did that because we HAD to. There was NO other way. Ruka, this organization… this base… it's the ONLY thing we have. If anything… ANYTHING at all catches, we're through. Finished. Done. There are no more second chances. We cannot afford to risk anything like that! Do you see?"

Ruka pushed Brighton back and returned him the look from before, "I told you! I told everyone! I KNEW she was innocent! She couldn't have been guilty but no one wanted to listen!" Ruka yelled, "And now look, she's gone! She had to spend those last days being miserable in a place that should have been happy for her!"

Brighton shook his head, "Can you really say that? Do you really know if she was miserable?" He looked at Ruka with a jaded expression, "Look, Ruka, I know, this a hard feeling. I know it's difficult. Trust me, I have dealt with it many times. Mostly with my own students."

Ruka's expression went from anger to shock. "W-What?"

Brighton sighed a bit, "This job isn't easy. I get a lot of new students from time to time, and only a fraction make it… Some get taken to the Black wings headquarters, the others get killed… Some train a bit, realize it's too much work and then quit. You're probably the only student I have had that has gotten this far."

He waved his hands a bit, "Not gonna lie. When I saw Vita for the first time and I heard the guy that rescued her was interested in joining, I almost laughed. What kind of idiot goes into the Black Wing's base all alone, takes a living project out, and then goes and tries to stand up to one of their upper members? All alone? Really, I wanted to see you just to see you. "he laughed, "So when you came up to me in town. I actually think that was the first real smile I cracked in a while. Never in my dreams did I picture the day care man being as competent as you are."

Ruka looked down at the ground. He suddenly felt really drained… and a bit sore. Brighton could really throw a punch.

Happy to see Ruka had finally calmed down a bit, Brighton tried to talk to him a bit more, "That's why… I took you in. Ideally, you should have been a mechanic because you had no skills upon starting with us. You had little ability to do anything. But I trusted you… not as a teacher, but as a person. I wanted to believe that maybe you could be the person we needed in the resistance." He sighed, "We're all jaded, angry, civilians with our own problems… You managed to stay fairly happy throughout the change with the town and found ways to adjust with ease, but when the time showed up, you did the right thing without hesitation. You're different from us, Ruka… you aren't just a fighter, you're a hero. Particularly 'her' hero." He walked up to Ruka and laid a hand on his shoulder, "Just because she's not around doesn't change this. You're still her hero, shouldn't you act that way?"

Whatever power kept Ruka standing up at the point vanished. He fell to the floor and began to cry uncontrollably. "It… it's not fair…" He sobbed out, "She… she didn't have to die… not like that… She… could have lived a normal life… she HAD one… they just took it from her…" He rambled on and on about how wrong everything was. His speech went from sobs to whimpers that couldn't be understood at all.

Brighton watched his student cry for a bit and tried to let him get it out of his system. He realized that Ruka probably wasn't even aware he was even crying like this after a few minutes and sighed, "Come on kid, If you're going to cry yourself to sleep, make sure you're in a bed first…" he picked Ruka up by the arm and laid him down on his bed, noting that Ruka was still having a crying fit. "I swear… you are one big handful when you get like this." He sighed. He looked up and around at Ruka's room and noted the mess of the place. "Ahhh… I would almost feel bad making you clean this up by yourself. Maybe I'll swing by after work tomorrow…"

He walked towards the door and turned around, "Make sure your uniform is in good shape too," he said, knowing Ruka couldn't hear him, but felt the need to throw out, "We might be going somewhere soon and you'll need to look decent." He turned off the light and shut the door. He sighed and took a step back. "the things I do for that kid and he doesn't even appreciate it…" He teleported off back to base with the new information on what happened earlier in the day, as well as considering a small talk with Claudine about reconsidering an offer that seemed pretty good at the moment.


End file.
